


Darling, For You I Would Wage A War

by carrotcouple



Category: Akatsuki no Yona | Yona of the Dawn
Genre: F/M, Introspection, JaeKi are in the background, M/M, Unresolved Romantic Tension, some light mentions of blood and trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-02-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:40:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22815592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carrotcouple/pseuds/carrotcouple
Summary: Jaeha tells her that falling in love is akin to drowning.But falling in love isn’t like drowning.Not to Yona at least.Falling in love with Yoon is like walking along a beach and belatedly noticing your toes have breached warm and shallow waters.
Relationships: Jae-Ha/Kija (Akatsuki no Yona), Yona/Yoon | Yun (Akatsuki no Yona)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 36





	Darling, For You I Would Wage A War

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lena_hope](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lena_hope/gifts).



> Happy Birthday, Maddy! You deserve all the YoonYona content in the world! (Especially after I somehow turned you into their number one fan, lol).

Jaeha tells her that falling in love is akin to drowning. Getting lost in blue eyes and pale white hair. Yona supposes, for Jaeha, someone who flies through the skies, being tied to his feelings for Kija _is_ like drowning. 

But falling in love isn’t like drowning. 

Not to Yona at least. 

She doesn’t even realize it at first. The sudden burst of flames and the startling realization that she had when she fell in love with Soowon is lacking. 

It starts small, simple, _achingly soft and sweet_. A hand pressed into hers, fingers brushing through her hair to help her get rid of tangles, healing palms pressed against her hurts, tears shed with her when she lets go of the strong mask she’s been trying to wear for so long. 

Falling in love with Yoon is like walking along a beach and belatedly noticing your toes have breached warm and shallow waters. 

Being with Yoon is so comfortable and being in love with him only makes it doubly so. She craves his presence and he welcomes her. They fit together naturally, the touches they share are normal, something they’ve done from the start. It wouldn’t make sense to change it now and it isn’t like she wants to. 

Yoon is _pretty_ , Yona wants to tell someone - but she doesn’t. 

( _Prettier than Soowon_ , she thinks for a second, but then decides to not go back to that thought ever again.)

Prettier than her. She used to feel a little annoyed at that - she no longer does. How could she feel annoyed when Yoon clicks his tongue in frustration and puts cool herbs against her sunburnt skin and scolds her when her hair has split ends because she doesn’t wear a hood under the scorching sun? 

She has freckles across her nose and shoulders, Yoon tells her. Yona never noticed, but she likes the fact that she matches with the freckles that dot Yoon’s face. 

Everything around her feels different when Yoon is by her side. They walk under the shade of trees, hoods drawn up to their eyes and holding hands. The dragons and Hak are around them, a loud bunch. Jaeha teases Kija who blushes up a storm and tries to bat Jaeha away from him. Hak tries to keep Zeno from running off and Shinah pokes at Ao’s cheeks. But the only thing Yona can hear is the sound of Yoon humming under his breath. 

No one notices.

_Well maybe Jaeha does_. He tells her regularly, about his feelings for Kija, complaining and whining as they look for firewood. Yona chuckles, because Jaeha sounds so smitten. He asks her sometimes about whether she’s in love. 

( _Yona used to think of Soowon_ )

She thinks of Yoon. 

Maybe Jaeha has noticed her odd silences when he asks her and how her face has gone from torn to...at peace. 

Yona has no intentions of telling anyone. Not even Hak, her most trusted aide, who knows almost everything about her. She has no intentions to tell Yoon her feelings. She has not the time for love and she is definitely not living the kind of life that allows her to love freely. So she simply relishes in the warmth of Yoon’s smile and eyes turned to look at her. 

During their travels they chance upon the village Yoon was born in. He laughs when he tells them of how he first met Iksoo as they help clean out the village of festering waste. Yona thinks of how cold it must have been for Yoon, how hungry he must have been, of how the scars on his hands must have originated from this place. 

She cannot help but think that the lacking administration of her father and the leaders she often met, made Yoon suffer as a child. So she holds his hands in hers, under the guise of warming up her fingers, and whispers soundless apologies. 

_If only she had been in love with Yoon her entire life_.

He teaches her to cook sometimes. He shows her how to hold the knife and thinly slice vegetables. (Zeno interjects that vegetables are fine no matter how they’re cut). He points out what are medicinal herbs and what are the herbs that make food taste good. He teaches her how much water to use and when. Yona drinks up the sound of his voice like a sponge. 

He likes talking about cooking. 

Yoon doesn’t like violence. Yona is equally unnerved by violence, but it is a cloak she must pick up and wear when the situation calls for it. The calluses on her hands fit perfectly around the hilt of her short sword and the curve of her bow. And she must use those hands until they’re covered in the blood of the enemies of those dear to her. 

Yoon uncurls her hands from her weapons and washes the blood off of her skin, careful, dedicated. She gets blood on her skirts and sleeves sometimes and Yoon is angry when he washes them. Blood never properly washes out. It stains your soul. When she has blood on her face, Yoon has panic in his eyes as he wipes her face and searches for any marring cuts. 

Yoon is a healer and Yona is a soldier.

Yoon makes Yona feel human. He makes her feel like her sins and the sins of her father that she carries on her back don’t exist. Despite the suffering she put the country through for her own selfish whims, Yoon interlaces his fingers with hers and treats her like she’s precious to him. Despite the scars on Yoon’s soul that she might as well have carved there with her own hands, he smiles like the sun - almost rivaling Zeno - when he looks at her. 

Yona accidentally catches Jaeha and Kija kissing. Pressed close as possible and fingers tangled in each other’s hair, as if they can’t bear to be apart. Her face heats up and she flees. She hadn’t known that their relationship had progressed to that point. 

_Does she want to touch Yoon?_

It’s not like she hasn’t thought of such a thing. ( _She used to daydream once, of someone she doesn’t like to remember now_ ). She has thought of pressing kisses to Yoon’s hands, cheeks and lips. But she knows better. She knows who she is and what it is that she must do for this country. She cannot make Yoon suffer for being by her side. 

And she cannot make him wait with flimsy promises either. 

That was why she decided to never voice her feelings. 

_(Never again. She’s still so, so, so terrified.)_

Yona asks Yoon to cut her hair. He is confused, knowing that she and Hak were somewhat pleased that her hair was growing back. Her short hair had felt like a scar and a reminder of everything that she lost. But she thinks differently now. She no longer thinks of _him_ with that morbid and painful affection that consumed her. 

Instead, she thinks of a young boy who barely knew her and only saw her as a dictator, bringing her back from the edge of death, and gentle and experienced hands evening out the hair she had mixed feelings for. 

He agrees, commenting on how she has split ends, how her hair has slightly changed color under the relentless sun. She has freckles on the back of her neck as well, he tells her as he brushes strands of red hair from her nape. Her skin burns with a fiery want at his touch. The image of Jaeha and Kija kissing floods her mind and she aches to touch Yoon. 

But she is a princess - even though she is a fallen one - with more sins than Yoon could even imagine. Or maybe he does know and simply doesn’t tell her that he can see the black swamp she sinks into slowly, the hands of those who suffered in her kingdom holding onto her tightly so she can never escape. Not until she has atoned for everything that she has done.

Yoon is a bright mind, a free soul, who has only just spread his wings to see the world. His blue eyes sparkle as he sees the things he’s never seen before. And Yona is satisfied to see the world by his side, her eyes shining just as much as his do. 

Because the world always looks different when Yoon is by her side. 

Yoon holds her hands when she wakes up in the middle of the night from nightmares. Sometimes she relives her father’s death, sometimes she kills Soowon, sometimes she and her father remain untouched and Yona brings her kingdom to ruin with her own hands, sometimes...she takes the sword from Soowon and kills her father in his stead as he laughs in the faces of all those he’s made suffer. 

Yoon holds her hands, pulls her into a hug, runs fingers through impossibly tangled curls and whispers words of reassurance to her. 

She’s alright.

He’s there. 

She’s there with him. 

Yona is fine just being by his side. His existence is like a guiding light to her, a warmth in the cold that is her life. If she can just stay by his side like this, she will march down the darkest and most painful roads. If she can just stay by his side, she will become the spear that will lead the war to change her kingdom and the undo of all the damage her father inflicted on her people. 

Just so long as she can hold his hand. 

If she can see him smile, she will face any nightmare, no matter how terrifying. Because in the end, she is a leader and Yoon is the crutch she wants to lean on. 

Her eyes are beautiful, is what Yoon tells her one day as they watch the sunset while the dragons set up the tents. She stares into his clear blue eyes and begs to differ. She bears the weight of the world in her eyes. But Yoon...Yoon’s eyes are so honest and open and he tells her he knows, he understands. Does he understand how the ghosts of her father and uncle haunt her? Does he understand how the men that she’s killed whisper in her ears and laugh cruelly when she struggles? Does he understand that he is the only breath of real air she can breathe?

Falling in love with Yoon is like walking along a beach and belatedly noticing your toes have breached warm and shallow waters. 

But sometimes, under your feet isn’t sand, but sharp gravel instead. 

Yoon gets caught up in a bandit raid when they’re shopping for necessities. There are kidnapped villagers. Yona hears Jaeha mutter darkly about slave traders. She feels fear in her veins. But more than fear she feels rage and a bloodlust she cannot dispel. Hak watches her guardedly as they rush to save Yoon. Her hands are curled around the hilt of her short sword, knuckles white. 

Hak calls her name, that is all he needs to do. They know each other well enough. 

She tells him that they will not rest until Yoon is safe again. 

Maybe he knows, or maybe he writes it off as her attachment to all of them. He nods. 

It doesn’t take them long to arrive at the camp of the bandits and Yona is merciless, shutting out the screams of the bandits that killed and stole and sold people. She is covered in blood again when she finds Yoon and he stares at her fondly and understandingly. And once his hands are out of their bindings, he wipes blood from her face and then touches her blood soaked sleeves. 

“This will take too long to clean properly. I’ll just make new clothes for you,” he says. 

“Alright,” Yona answers. 

He holds her blood stained hands as they go to join Hak and the dragons. 

Yona thinks Yoon knows. He knows that she’s standing knee deep in the ocean, on the verge of drowning. But he will never pull her in, because he knows she has no desire to force him to walk that path of thorns with her. 

But he will, at the end of the day, pick those thorns out and put medicine to those hurts. 

Because Yona is a soldier, and Yoon is her healer.

**Author's Note:**

> I swear I was possessed by some kind of ghost when I wrote this. I have never written in this style for more than maybe one page. It's super hard. But I somehow did it. I wanted to implement YoonYona into the canon setting, so here we are. 
> 
> Say hello on tumblr/twitter/insta: @carrotcouple


End file.
